Ledecky on China doping scandal: ‘There’s supposed to be consequences’

On July 29, 2021, Katie Ledecky swam a blistering anchor leg for Team USA in the final of the women’s 800-meter freestyle relay at the Tokyo Olympics, stopping the clock with a time that would have given the Americans a world record in the event — except for the quartet of Chinese swimmers two lanes over, who out-touched them by four-tenths of a second, taking both the gold medal and the world record.

So when Ledecky, a seven-time Olympic gold medalist, speaks about the Chinese doping scandal that burst into view this spring — calling into question some of the results from Tokyo and hijacking much of the discourse around the sport as the U.S. Olympic swimming trials get set to begin this weekend in Indianapolis — she does so not only as a swimming legend, a clean-sport advocate and an athlete who has been drug-tested hundreds of times over her career.

She also does so as someone with a large chunk of history on the line, at least theoretically: Though Ledecky is proud of her silver medal, one of three in her storied Olympic career, an eighth gold would have equaled the most in history by a female swimmer and put her behind only Michael Phelps (23) and Mark Spitz (nine) among all swimmers.

“Clean play is supposed to be at forefront of the Olympics, and I think it’s really disappointing we’re in this situation three years after this all happened,” Ledecky, 27, said during a recent interview. “ … It’s tough to accept as an athlete, and now also to feel what it’s like to be an athlete who won a [silver] medal behind some athletes who tested positive — I now know what that feels like. I’ve seen it before with other athletes and always felt for those athletes.”

In April, the New York Times and German public broadcaster ARD revealed that 23 top Chinese swimmers had tested positive for a banned substance before the Tokyo Olympics but were cleared to compete after the World Anti-Doping Agency, following an investigation, accepted China’s explanation of an “environmental” tainting originating in the kitchen where swimmers’ meals were prepared. The positive tests were not revealed publicly at the time.

Thirteen of the 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive in January 2021 for trimetazidine (TMZ) — a heart-disease medication that is on the banned list because it can increase stamina and reduce recovery time — went on to compete in Tokyo seven months later, with four of them winning medals.

Among them: then-23-year-old Zhang Yufei, who won gold with a world record time in the women’s 200-meter butterfly, with Americans Regan Smith and Hali Flickinger taking silver and bronze, then about an hour later swam the third leg for China’s gold medal-winning and world record-setting 4x200 free relay squad. Zhang also won silver in the women’s 100 fly earlier in the meet, with American Torri Huske edged out of the bronze by one one-hundredths of a second.

At the time, no one within the larger swimming community was aware that Zhang and many of her teammates had tested positive seven months earlier. Since the story broke this spring, WADA has defended its actions, or lack thereof, saying it investigated extensively and had no basis to challenge China’s explanation of an accidental contamination.

With WADA considering the case to be closed, there is no official discussion of taking away any of China’s medals from Tokyo — or any other sanction — and some of the swimmers in question, including Zhang, are expected to compete at the Paris Olympics next month.

“Of course our athletes are thinking about it,” said Shana Ferguson, chief commercial officer for USA Swimming. “ … Naturally, our athletes are varying levels of disappointed in the perception they aren’t necessarily playing on a fair playing field across the world.”

For Ledecky and other Olympic-level swimmers, the frustration and disappointment primarily stem from WADA’s apparent deviation from its standard protocols. Typically, under “strict liability” rules — which say athletes are ultimately responsible for what goes into their bodies — a positive test would trigger a provisional suspension while an investigation takes place, with the suspension made public.

Some have speculated political and financial considerations came into play in the case of the Chinese swimmers; the revelation of the positive tests in January 2021 would have caused an uproar in China a little more than a year before the 2022 Beijing Winter Games.

“From an athlete’s perspective, not even speaking as an athlete who was quote-unquote affected medal-wise from this, I think all [of us] are disappointed and discouraged and lacking some trust in the systems — in WADA — and how this was handled,” Ledecky said. “There are still a lot of questions that haven’t been answered. … We get drug-tested a lot, and we all know the rules. There’s supposed to be strict liability. If you test positive, there’s supposed to be consequences.”

Stanford women’s swimming coach Greg Meehan, who coached Ledecky from 2016 to 2021 and served as the women’s coach for Team USA at the Tokyo Olympics, decried the “complete lack of transparency” on the part of WADA. In a post on X, he said the case confirmed the swimming community’s fears that doping could be rampant during the pandemic because of the complicated logistics of testing athletes in different countries with different quarantine protocols.

“Most elite athletes will have one Olympic cycle in their primes, two if they are lucky,” Meehan wrote. “[T]hey deserve better.”

The silver medal in the 800 free relay was one of two Ledecky won in Tokyo, to go along with golds in the individual 800- and 1,500-meter freestyles. Considered the most dominant female swimmer in history, she is targeting four events in Paris, the fourth Olympics of her career, which still affords her the opportunity to catch and pass American legend Jenny Thompson, whose eight Olympic golds are the most in history by a female swimmer.

Asked about having been potentially robbed of an additional gold in Tokyo, Ledecky instead spoke of two teammates from that relay, Allison Schmidt and Brooke Forde, who joined her on the medal stand that day as the Chinese national anthem played, then retired from the sport following those Olympics. They won’t have the same opportunity to redeem themselves in Paris that Ledecky will.

“This would’ve been their only gold medal from Tokyo,” Ledecky said of Schmidt and Forde. “We were proud of that relay performance. We broke the world record. Allison would’ve had her second world record [of her career]. There are a lot of questions that need to be answered.”

In an Instagram post following news of the Chinese positive tests, Schmidt recalled being drug-tested following that relay and wrote, “It saddens me that … the purity of competition [was] pushed aside for money and politics.”

In American swimming circles, the recent suspension of distance swimmer Kensey McMahon for a positive doping test has been held up as proof Team USA holds itself to a higher standard than some other countries. McMahon, a former NCAA champion and world championship medalist, was suspended for four years by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency last month after testing positive in 2023 for vadadustat, a medication typically used to treat anemia in patients with chronic kidney disease.

McMahon, 24, has said she did not take the substance intentionally but has been unable to prove an accidental contamination, despite hiring her own investigators in an attempt to unravel a mystery she says she can’t explain. Still, because she could not prove her innocence, her four-year suspension was upheld.

“It’s frustrating [to see] the contrast,” 12-time Olympic medalist Natalie Coughlin said. “When you see that 13 [Chinese] swimmers tested positive and it was never disclosed, essentially swept under the rug, and then read about [McMahon] — that’s a tough pill to swallow.”